Posts tagged “childhood memories”

My grandpa is one of those men who is hard-working, fun, a good teacher, humble, faith-filled and faithful…the list goes on. And, if I have the opportunity to marry some guy who reminds me of him, I’ll feel very blessed in that regard! I can only remember being in trouble with him once when I was a kid. My brother and I were fighting/squabbling while playing ping-pong at my grandparents’ cottage. Grandpa was tired of hearing us fight, so out came his gruff voice (the one that’s usually saved for commanding dogs to hush when they bark too much at the door), and he banished us from playing ping pong for the rest of that afternoon.

My main memories of him include patience – especially when teaching us tennis strokes or helping us learn to fish. Patience…and a colorful vocabulary. Now, many of you probably think that means he swears like a sailor, but I’ve never heard a curse word on his lips. No. His colorful vocabulary consists of: Hookie-doo (meaning: cock-eyed, out of whack, needs to be fixed); Unreal! (meaning: no way!, I can’t believe it! amazing!); schnockered (technically means drunk/tipsy, but in his vocab it means you got beaten soundly in Mario Kart or some other Nintendo game). Yes, he’s played video games ever since they were invented. He owned several major systems through the years, including Atari 5200 (which is now in my basement and on which I still play Pac-Man and Jungle Hunt). I remember him teaching my baby brother, Christopher, how to play Nintendo when he was a toddler. They’d be sitting next to each other, Grandpa’s bulk next to Christopher with a pacifier in his mouth, learning how to shoot ducks in Duck Hunt.

Like most men, Grandpa avoids going to the doctor when possible. I remember a day when he went fishing and caught a fish-hook in the palm of his hand. He took the hook out, cleaned the wound, and only complained of the pain when he tried to play tennis later in the day. It hurt to hold his racket, though he was determined to play anyway. He’s a tough guy but never a mean guy!

I appreciate that my grandpa has always been a faithful husband. He and Grandma recently celebrated their 66th anniversary. In all of those years, he’s been a provider, a stronghold, and has loved Grandma and worked with her as a team. They each give strength to the other. And, they’ve lived a life of faith, relying on God for strength and provision as well. Grandpa doesn’t think of himself as especially wise or Bible-smart (probably because Grandma has tons of the Bible memorized, and he compares himself to her). But he’s a man I can go to for prayer and wisdom, counsel, and insightful listening. He’s the man who (all through college and many years after) ended his emails to me with Psalm 118:24 ~ “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!” I heard that from him so often it’s become the verse that rings in my head as I wake up each morning. A good way to start the day! A good reminder that no matter how my day is going, I can praise God for His hand in it. I do thank God regularly for the grandparents He’s given me. And I treasure each day I have with them.

About the artwork:

This piece was completed as a demonstration for my Drawing 1 students. We’re trying something new this semester – scribble portraits! It’s a pen & ink technique that’s faster than stippling (where the entire image is made from dots). However, the scribble mark-making is tricky because you can’t control it as easily as you would dots/stipple. If you want to try a scribble portrait at home, here are a few tips I shared with my students:

Use a reference image with strong value range/lighting and clear details. Change the photo to black and white when you print it out, so that you’re focused on value and not on color.

Less is more! Use very few marks in the light areas. It’s always easier to go back and add more marks than to try to lighten an area that’s too dark. Paint pens or white out can be used for small mistakes and touch-ups.

Prop up your desk/table top while working. Step back from your artwork and look at it from 5+ feet away to see how everything’s blending. The scribble marks will look strange from up close. But, when done right, they blend beautifully from far away. Pause and check your work continually to ensure you’re capturing nuances of muscle, tendons, cheek bones, etc.

Change pen sizes. Three pen sizes were used in the making of this portrait. One was a small (.7 mm) gel pen for tight spots and areas where I wanted thinner marks/lines. The 2nd was an ultra-fine Sharpie marker for most details in the face and hair. Third was a fine-tip Sharpie for the dark areas of the sweater. I worked on 18″ x 24″ paper to keep my pen strokes loose.

Failure IS an option! Don’t be afraid to trash your first attempt if you blow it. It’s better to start over and improve on technique than to cover half the face in white-out because you refuse to admit failure. There is no particular scribble pattern required. Look up examples online, and you’ll see several artists who have made a career from this technique. Experiment with line patterns, and have FUN!

The “scent of home” – if I were to ask you what that means to you, what would you say? I’m not talking about the Febreze commercials where your son’s room smells like a gym locker. This is more along the lines of a scene in Disney’s Ratatouille where the food critic flashes back to a moment in childhood, sitting at a rustic kitchen table where someone who loves him has prepared a meal for him. Each of us have experienced moments like that, where a sight or scent triggers memories of a time and place that once was home. For me it can be fresh sawdust, taking me back to hours spent in my dad’s workshop, sawing and hammering as a child. Or, a salty sea breeze, and I’m suddenly 7 years old again, building castles and burying jellyfish in wet sand by the Atlantic Ocean. Certain soaps remind me of my grandmother’s house and of her hug. Home. For some, “home” is about the people around you. For others, it’s a place or country where you were raised or spent years of your life. I’ve heard that missionary kids, military families, and others who moved several times growing up may struggle to pinpoint a particular place they’d call “home.” Yet we all have an idea of what home is or could or should be.

Today’s portrait is based on a senior photo-shoot I did several years ago. When I talked with Anya about what setting she’d like for her photos, she mentioned a prairie preserve nearby. She said the prairie paths and flowers reminded her of the Ukraine where she grew up. Anya is an American citizen now. So, in most ways, America is home now. But yellow and blue is woven into the fabric of her character, her values, her family’s cultural heritage. If you look up the meaning behind the Ukrainian flag, you find that yellow represents fields of wheat, and the blue symbolizes sky, mountains, and streams. No surprise then that nature, fields of wild flowers, and fresh air are the “scent of home” for Anya.

C.S. Lewis talks about the common human longing for our own “far-off country.” In The Weight of Glory (Oxford, 1942) he says, “These things – the beauty, the memory of our own past – are good images of what we really desire…but they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.” He goes on to comment about philosophies that try to “convince you that earth is your home…by trying to persuade you that earth can be made into heaven, thus giving a sop to your sense of exile in earth as it is.” But, he continues, “we remain conscious of a desire which no natural happiness will satisfy.”

For myself, I can attest to a feeling that the sense of “home” I long for is elusive. Were I to return to my 7-year-old self at the beach, would I really savor the sun on my face and the salty taste on my tongue? Or would I more likely be squabbling with my brother about who gets to use the shovel next, and nervous about jellyfish stings when I do dive into the waves? Time has a way of filtering our memories. Like a soft-focus lens, it blurs the edges, emphasizing what we want, need, long for and deemphasizing other details. According to Lewis, “home” is elusive, not because it never existed, but because our desire points us to a home we haven’t visited yet…a “splendor, which nature fitfully reflects.”

Anya is someone I’m blessed to know, because she and her family live out their faith. And, in living out that faith, they remind me of “home.” When we’re goofy and laughing and joyful, it’s a taste of joy that will one day become eternal reality. When we’re talking about the ups and downs of life, they keep me grounded in the truth that there is more to this world than what I see with my eyes. When we’re introducing one another to foods from the other’s culture, it’s a tidbit, a sampling of the coming feast in a country we haven’t yet visited. When we’re shooting photos in a field of wildflowers, the colors and scents surrounding us are merely a ghosting of the flower we have not found…the aroma of a home yet to come.

It’s been way too long since I’ve had a chance to post…not that I haven’t been painting! But May was taken up with sample paintings for a possible book project, school finishing, and diving straight into curriculum writing for a chunk of June. So, I’m just now getting back into a more regular rhythm with time for blog and personal projects.

The painting above is me (the cute one in the middle) with my two older siblings, a portrait painted recently for my sister’s birthday. Looking back at old family photos is such a funny time-warp. The hair styles, couch and pillow scream “late 70’s/early 80’s” – in fact, my sister wondered why I didn’t update her hairstyle when painting the portrait. But the Mary Lou Retton haircut was in then, so I’m sure Jenny looked stylish for the time. I can’t see much (if any) of current me in the baby version here. However, seeing my siblings at those ages reminds me of my nieces and nephews now. We have photos of Jenny’s daughters with that exact sideways glance, tilted head, coy expression on their faces. And any photo of Jeremy looks identical to his eldest boy. I could even venture to say that my youngest niece resembles my baby photos, with her round cheeks, turned-up nose, and dark hair falling across the top of her head. The Bozarth genes run strong.

Working on this portrait brought back a lot of childhood memories. Jenny braiding my hair, while I sat and whined that she was pulling too hard. Jeremy teaching me how to pace my steps for a hook shot in basketball, or letting me try out his juggling equipment and showing me how to juggle various items. Jeremy instigating trouble and then sitting back to watch us younger siblings squabble it out. Jenny letting me troop along with her and her friend Laura in the woods behind Laura’s house…showing me how to suck the sweet nectar from honeysuckle flowers, and consoling me when I screamed as a snake slithered around my feet on the forest path. Years of sharing a room with Jenny, and her recounting of my random sayings when I’d talk in my sleep. Asking Jeremy for help with math or science homework, and trying to listen as he’d explain 5 different ways of solving the problem when I really just wanted 1 easy answer.

Any of you who know me well probably hear me talk about my siblings on a regular basis. They crop up naturally in conversation because they continue to be part of every-day life. Making time to hang out with my brothers and sister isn’t as easy as it was when we were kids. Of course, sharing a room or being packed shoulder to shoulder in a car for 17 hours was never thought of as quality time. However, those forced situations of time together helped build the foundation for our relationships now. Living within 40 minutes of each other, it’s easy to let months slip by where we’re each consumed with our own fast-paced schedule. We have to be purposeful in calling and connecting. I realize I’m blessed to have siblings I still want to know and spend time with. And, though I don’t necessarily learn from them as I did when little, I do still look up to them in many ways. They’ve taught me about life and marriage, parenting, faith, work-ethic, budgeting, priorities, and family. Some of those lessons currently apply in my life; others I may use down the road. Besides the serious stuff, my siblings are also fun to be around! If you ask any of my nieces and nephews, they’d probably tell you that we can be pretty goofy when hanging out together – perhaps it’s because spending time together takes us right back to childhood, bringing out our silly sides. We let go the stresses of our adult responsibilities and take a few moments to flash back to when we were the kids in those photos.

If you have siblings, take some time to look back and remember who you were. Then, take a look now and see who you are. If those relationships aren’t what you’d like them to be, you can’t necessarily change who you’ve all become. But you can always work toward restoration, reaching out when and how you’re able. And, if you’re on the cusp of adult-hood, waiting for the chance to get far away from your siblings, pause before you run. Remember the good times when possible, forgive the hurts (with God’s help…not something you can do on your own), and be open to staying connected in the years to come.